Busted
by livinglouder
Summary: Hanged man, as it was, could have easily been renamed Sam Always Wins. Wincest.


One might have guessed it but the Winchester boys played an awful lot of card games growing up.

When Sam wasn't older the 2, he and Dean played everything from 52 Pickup to Go Fish. Of course, Sam had a hard time grasping most of the games but Dean was always there to change the rules or cheat to help Sammy out.

It was somewhere after he'd turned 5 that Dean invented a new game that he called Hanged Man. It seemed to be a simple enough game and Sam caught onto it pretty quickly. What filled him with joy was the fact that he always won. Dean had _made_ it and he kept _losing_.

Over the years, their card games evolved into Crazy Eights and Golf but that was always a matter of luck. It kept shifting overtime and turned into Black Jack and Poker. At first they bet pretzels, then chores, then actual money.

Through out all those years, leading up to present day, the game of hanged Man continued to he played out.

They played it so far and in-between that Sam had missed the pattern up until his seventeenth year.

Hanged man, as it was, could have easily been renamed Sam Always Wins. The game had literally been master minded for Sam to always come out on top. Sure, Dean would win rounds or make the score incredibly close but it was always Sam who won the game. After putting two and two together, he noticed when Dean would toss out needed cards and stack the deck in his favour.

He had humoured the idea of confronting him about it for years but, in the end, he would always swallow his curiosity.

Despite all that, even in his mid-twenties, Dean was still up to the same, old tricks. He'd gotten better at slight of hand and his skills of cheating at the game grew as rapidly as Sam's ability to counter it.

He enjoyed the challenge. Every time a play didn't go as Dean had planned, he would get this disillusioned look of confusion that he would try to cover up with mock thrill. Whenever a round would go on longer then expected (because Sam had started tossing cards he needed as well), the elder would get this pensive expression, followed by his little habit of flicking the ends of his cards. That move had taken a while to decipher as anything but he found Dean was trying to give him a glimpse of his cards. He hadn't thought that was on purpose until he started to do it whenever he was close to winning.

Which was where such history lead to today.

Sam fanned his hand out on the table and gave him a look of amusement. "I know for a fact that you have all the winning cards, Dean. Just put them down already."

His jaw clenched in protest. It seemed only in Sam's presence did he become a bad liar. "... You know, if you're bored of the game, you could just say so."

The younger just stared, a smirk playing on his lips.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Don't you think that if I had the cards, I'd have thrown them down by now?"

"No." It was so straight forward that it caught him off guard.

Dean fumbled through reactions and silent comebacks. His lips parted several times, only to breath through them. Fingers fiddled with the cards, clearly deciding what to do.

The cards hit the table.

Sam's grin turned Cheshire.

"When did you figure it out?"

"It was oddly clever of you. I'm surprised. At such a young age too."

"Shut up."

Laughter filled the room. Smile still firmly in place, Sam collected the cards and began to shuffle.

"Seriously though, how'd you figure it out?"

Sam shifted his hands and made the bridge. "I think I should be asking the questions and the only one I have is _why_?"

"Whaddaya mean _why_?"

"Come on, Dean. We've been playing this game for, what, 20 years now? In all that time, I have won every single game and every time you bow out."

"So, I'm not a poor sport."

"Dean, you used to get annoyed when I won _pretzels_ off you."

A pause. "Yeah, well-"

"What's the point of playing the game if you let me win every time?"

"I don't _let_ you-"

"Dean." Sam chuckled. "Come on."

Another pause and then a heavy sigh. "You know, this curiosity thing was cute when you were _three_."

"Jerk." He laughed.

"Bitch."

"...So?"

Dean groaned. "That _is_ the point, you idiot."

"What is?"

"Stanford education and you can't think back to five seconds ago?"

A slight scowl. However, he kept his mouth shut as the rewound their conversation. "... To let me win?"

Dean gave him a look that said it all.

"Wait." There was laughter in his voice. "You never let me win anything."

"You were _five_, Sam."

"So why are we still playing it?"

"Cause ..." Dean started but seemed to catch himself.

Sam simply smiled, trying to encourage some sort of answer.

Dean shifted his chair back; he knew he wasn't getting his answer. That meant it had to be something humiliating. Something personal. Something that pulsed quietly about Sammy.

His smile grew.

"You're such a sap." Sam replied to the silent confession. There was laughter on his tongue.

"Shut up." Dean repeated, walking past him and placing his palm to Sam's forehead. As he passed, he simply pushed his head back to show his annoyance. As his hand slid off, his fingers brushed through his hair before Dean pushed back and forced his head back to its original position.

Compensation.

Dean was such a Winchester.

_FIN | Constructive critique always welcome!_


End file.
